


Still Waters

by soberloki



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Extremely Dubious Consent, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-17
Updated: 2013-12-17
Packaged: 2018-01-05 00:27:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 432
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1087418
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soberloki/pseuds/soberloki
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-war, Harry isn't the same. Inspired by <i>Still Waters</i>, Reverend Jim White. Seriously. That is one gorgeously weird song.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Still Waters

Voldemort dies, and half of the Wizarding world disappears.

Harry comes home strange. Not harmful, not violent, but his smile isn't real and he doesn't see the people he once loved any longer. George, bereft of Fred and Angelina, spends hours in his company, silently pleading for things that he can't define.

Nobody makes it out entirely sane, but Harry _is_ a hero. He's done the job more thoroughly and efficiently than they'd dared to hope. If he drifts from moment to moment with a weirdly blank and focused look on his face, they pretend not to see and remind each other how lucky they are, even if most of that luck has been bad.

Harry knows things have changed.

Three weeks after the final count of the dead, the should-be-dead, Harry disappears too. 

~*~*~

Reports come from the strangest places – Cairo, Johannesburg, Vancouver – of the after-effects, like ripples, of something important but unseen; Harry's friends know he's alive, if not well.

~*~*~

A year after Skeeter stops writing articles about the Boy-Who-Lived, Snape finds him in Mobile, Alabama, sitting under a tree that bears the weight of forty hanged men.

"Communing with your own kind, Potter?" he asks, too tired to smirk; too tired to stop himself.

Harry smiles emptily, and Snape selects a patch of grass under the tree, dressed in Muggle clothes stolen from shops between home and away, a stranger in a familiar place.

~*~*~

They travel together. It isn't difficult, since Harry doesn't really notice anything the man says or does. He eats what Snape gives him, or wears the clothes he now washes, or lies down in whatever bed the man procures for them each night.

He doesn't object when they run afoul of a group of sailors in Florida, just falls on the floor and bleeds until Snape collects him and takes him to their rented room. The next night, their ship goes down with all hands on board, and Snape realises there are brief windows, moments when Harry sees the world outside himself.

It gives him something to work toward.

~*~*~

Harry supposes he isn't gay – he's never taken the time to find out – but he doesn't stop Snape removing his clothes, caressing his skin, mouthing and sucking him. Snape can take what he likes; his body is just a thing. He's surprised when the dark man wrings an orgasm from his half-numb flesh.

"Not dead yet, Potter," Snape murmurs against his throat, and Harry isn't sure, but it's possible there are things that may draw him up from the cool depths he's drifted in for so long.


End file.
